There are many existing systems that perform networked digital video recording. Such systems are often comprised of readily available components. The components often include a TCP/IP network, one or more digital video cameras and one or more storage servers. Storage servers are computer systems running software that receives video data from the video cameras and stores the video data on a storage medium such as a hard disk drive. Some digital video recording systems also use viewing application software resident on remote computers. This viewing application software may be used for viewing live or pre-recorded video data received from either the video cameras or the storage servers. The live or pre-recorded video data may be viewed in one or more video windows generated by the viewing application software and rendered on a computer display.
The viewing application software described above typically provides the ability to extract pre-recorded video data from a given camera for storage in a video file. The video file may then be played back using any suitable media player, such as the Apple QuickTime™ media player. Additionally, some viewing application software provides the ability to view synchronised pre-recorded or live video data from multiple networked cameras (or sources of video data).
A problem with the conventional viewing application software described above is that it is difficult for an operator to effectively monitor pre-recorded or live video data from a large number of networked cameras.
Thus, a need clearly exists for a more efficient method of displaying video data.